: : : : : Q2) Is it true that in some schools in red states Creationism is taught in a science class and Darwinism is dismissed or ignored as unimportant or just a fiction? If true, how long has this been going on? Which states?
: : : : : I was so shocked when I heard this from an American friend....

: : : : Starting with Question 2. Yes, evolution vs. creationism or some variation is still a hot issue in some states. See article below. Bringing this around to phrases, recently a school administrator thought she'd found a solution by referring to "processes over time" rather than to the word "evolution." It didn't work out. On a personal note, I believe the Earth and everything else was created by God. But I've never understood why people think that is not compatible with evolution. See Genesis. It's all there.

: : : : ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- Since 2002, Dr. Kenneth Miller has been upset that biology textbooks he has written are slapped with a warning sticker by the time they appear in suburban Atlanta schools. Evolution, the stickers say, is "a theory, not a fact."
: : : : http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/01/14/evolution.stickers.ap/

: : : I googled "Safire, red states," figuring William Safire would be all over this. The following doesn't completely answer the question. But it did mention another book I'm going to have to buy:

: : : "...For red state/blue state, I have in hand 'Hatchet Jobs and Hardball' (Oxford, $25), a new dictionary of political slang. Though the editor, Grant Barrett, provides no context for his entries, the citations often define themselves. Perhaps because color television was not universal until a generation ago, electoral maps were not consistent until the campaign of the first President Bush against Bill Clinton.

: : : But on Oct. 15, 1992, a Boston Globe writer noted, 'But when the anchormen turn to their electronic tote boards election night and the red states for Clinton start swamping the blue states for Bush, this will be a strange night for me.' (By digging further on the Web, the reader can find that the coiner, or at least an early user, was David Nyhan, then of the Globe staff.)...That poses (not begs) the question: Why are Republicans red and Democrats blue? In France in the 1780's, revolutionaries sported a red cockade; in the European revolutions of 1848, 'Red Republicans' advocated the use of force to overthrow governments and red became the color of communism. The Times of London wrote in 1848 about the battle in France 'of the red Republic, as the Ultras there call themselves, against the blue -- colours being used to designate the parties as much in provincial France as in our counties in England.' (A nice find, but somehow that doesn't strike me as the reason that solidly G.O.P. states in the U.S. are colored red on maps. Sometimes, as Sigmund Freud is said to have said, a cigar is just a cigar.)..."